Longtime Marion restaurant The Shovel reopens its doors

Amber Rose, a waitress at the Shovel Restaurant, serves the restaurant's first customers after the business reopened Wednesday. The restaurant had been forced to close in November.(Photo: Sarah Volpenhein/Marion Star)

Owner Curtis Prise explained that the restaurant was forced to close after he owed $25,000 in state sales taxes.

The business was placed on the Habitual Offenders' Program by the Ohio Department of Taxation, a classification for businesses that failed to pay sales tax for two months in a row or three times in one year.

Prise said that he had a hard time paying the sales tax after an increase in food cost in 2017 and didn't expect the business to close.

"I was trying to keep it open, but the food cost was hurting us," he said. "I didn't realize the state would act so quickly and shut us down. I was upset; I didn't know what to do."

The Shovel's Facebook page published a post on Nov. 7 announcing it would be permanently closed.

Prise said his goal was to get the restaurant reopened, noting that an increase in business shortly before the closing covered the food cost and that he let the sales tax pile up by accident.

"I wasn't paying that much attention to it (sales tax). It is not going to happen again, I know that," he said.

After acquiring a bank loan, Prise said that he was able to pay the taxes and was cleared to reopen the business.

"It feels great, I missed not doing it because it has been my life for so long," he said. "We could have reopened two weeks ago, but we wanted to take our time."

Brenda Yost, who has been a manager at the restaurant for more than a year, said she was told that the restaurant was going to reopen shortly before Christmas.

"A lot of us had been there for years," Yost said. "It was a surprise and it has been busy for us. A lot of the old staff came back and we had to hire five new people."

Yost added that she was devastated when the restaurant closed and that there were talks that it would reopen, but she was uncertain.

"People had to find other jobs," she said. "We were all taken back and I decided to wait it out."

Prise started the business in 1981 after purchasing the building. With its location in between railroad tracks and next to the Union Station, it became a popular destination for out-of-town visitors.

Pictures of power and steam shovels from the days of the Marion Power Shovel Company hang on the restaurant's walls, making it feel in one Facebook user's mind like a "museum."

HKarim@nncogannett.com

740-375-5154

Tweet me @Hasan_Marion

Amber Rose, a waitress at the Shovel Restaurant, serves the restaurant's first customers after the business reopened Wednesday. The restaurant had been forced to close in November.(Photo: Sarah Volpenhein/Marion Star)